Iran flexes military muscles
Guards strike Zionist, IS targets in Iraq, Syria • Baghdad recalls Tehran envoy
BAGHDAD: Iraq summoned Iran’s envoy in Baghdad and recalled its ambassador from Tehran on Tuesday in a sharp rebuke to its ally over deadly missile strikes on its autonomous Kurdish region. Iraq challenged Iran’s claim that the strikes targeted the Zionist entity’s intelligence services in response to recent Zionist assassinations of Iranian and pro-Iranian commanders. It said it would lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council over the Iranian “attack on its sovereignty”.
Iran’s strikes, which also hit alleged Islamic State group targets in Iraq’s western neighbor Syria, came with tensions high across the Middle East as the Zionist entity battles Iran ally Hamas and drew condemnation from the United States. Four people were killed and six wounded in the strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan, the region’s security council said. The dead included prominent real estate magnate Peshraw Dizayee who was hit by a strike on his family home, the region’s leading party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said.
Iran defended its missile strikes in Iraq and Syria, saying they were a “targeted operation” and “just punishment” against those who breach the Islamic republic’s security. “The Islamic republic, with its high intelligence capability, in a precise and targeted operation identified the criminals’ headquarters and hit it with precision weapons,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had destroyed the “Zionist regime’s spy headquarters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq”. The strike came “in response to the recent vicious actions of the Zionist regime which martyred the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards and the resistance front,” a Guards statement carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency said.
Senior Guards commander Razi Moussavi was killed in a strike in Syria last month that was widely blamed on the Zionist entity. This month, Hamas deputy Saleh Al-Aruri was killed in a Beirut strike that Lebanese officials blamed on the Zionist entity. The Guards said their reprisals “will continue until the last drops of blood of the martyrs are avenged”.
But after a visit on Tuesday to the scene of the strike, Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qassem Al-Araji dismissed Iran’s claim it had hit a Zionist intelligence base, saying it struck a businessman’s family home. “Concerning the alleged presence of a headquarters of (the Zionist entity’s) Mossad, we visited the house, we inspected every corner of it and everything indicated that it was the family home of an Iraqi businessman,” Araji told Kurdish television station K24.
The Kurdistan region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Davos on Tuesday, where the Kurdish leader criticized the attacks as “unjustified and illegal” and called on the international community “not to remain silent”, his office said. The US State Department condemned the “reckless” Iranian strikes, saying they undermined Iraq’s stability.
In March 2022, the Guards carried out missile attacks in Arbil that it said targeted a “strategic center” operated by arch foe the Zionist entity. Contacts with the Zionist entity are outlawed in Iraq but some politicians and businessmen in Arbil have in the past been accused of maintaining informal ties. The Iraqi Kurdish authorities deny any contacts.
In Syria, the Guards said the strikes against alleged IS targets were in response to recent attacks in Iran. Explosions were heard in Aleppo and its countryside, where “at least 4 missiles that came from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea” fell, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
On Jan 3, IS suicide bombers struck crowds gathered near the tomb of Guards general Qasem Soleimani in Kerman, killing around 90 people. In December, an attack claimed by jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) killed at least 11 police officers in Iran’s southeast. The official IRNA news agency said the Syria attack was “the longest missile launch by Iran with a range of 1,200 kilometers” that can be interpreted as a “direct message to (the Zionist entity)”.
“There was an immense amount of pressure on the leadership in Tehran to flex its muscles in response to a series of setbacks it had suffered for the past few weeks,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group told AFP. “This is kind of a show of force with the twin objective of satisfying core constituents at home and also without escalating tensions with the US and (the Zionist entity).”
“Iran continues to proactively and dynamically back the anti-(Zionist) campaign,” said Tohid Asadi, professor at the University of Tehran. Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Asadi noted that Iran is aware “that any direct intervention will run the risk of dragging the region into a full-fledged all-out confrontation”. “This is the least favorite scenario for Iran,” he added.
International affairs specialist Fayyaz Zahed agreed. “Neither Iran, nor the United States, nor the other powers are interested in a direct conflict. But each of them plays their own cards,” he said. Zahed said a characteristic of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 35 years in power was to “avoid war” while maintaining the influence of Iran’s military. “We are already in a regional war,” said Vaez. “The events of the past 24 hours clearly demonstrated this has already started even though it’s still at a low simmer.”